Gabriel Belmont Whips It In The Lords Of Shadow Sequel

The first game was shiny on the outside, and a borrowed a bit too much from other games like the God of War series on the inside. Further adding to it’s downsides, it was a reboot which strayed far too much from the original Castlevania and felt too much like a new series. The gameplay was solid and fun, but the storyline never seemed to advance. But the ending saved the game single-handedly. I’m not going to spoil it for anyone but in my opinion, that ending was one of the best this generation, however far-fetched it might have been. Today, we are given a new CGI trailer to feast our eyes upon.

"Don't you see, Gabriel? You can bring her back!"

The site entitled, “The Dragon Returns,” shows us a trailer featuring Gabriel Belmont raising hell, as per usual. And telling more would be spoiling the first game for our readers, therefore this is where the story-time ends. You’ll have to see the trailer yourself, and we highly recommend watching the ending for the first game or better yet, playing through it before watching the trailer, for it is spoileriffic.

If the game hopes to succeed, it will have to up the ante on a number of things. The first being the combat. While the combat was generally fun in the first offering, it felt too much like others of it’s genre to be fully enjoyable. Second, they need to maintain the Castlevania feel, it is impossible to put it into words so if you want to know what that feeling is, play Symphony Of The Night. Third, please make the story keep advancing as you play and a bit more interesting, not like in the first LoS, where you kept on playing for four-five hours until something interesting happened. Oh and not to forget that the story REALLY picked up in the last hour of the game. Oh and free up the camera, please. Mercurysteam worked hard on making the vistas of LoS look beautiful but it was in vain, since you couldn’t properly look at them.

Lastly, and this is just a personal gripe with the game, get Michiru Yamane to do the OST again, she’s just perfect for Castlevania and quite frankly, we need a bit more tunes from the older games, since they were oh so great. And the series seems to be nodding to the old games, as proven by the appearance of a certain someone at the end of the trailer.

No matter how much I complain, the first LoS was polished and felt like a solid adventure but with lackluster gameplay and feel. If Mercurysteam overcomes this, we might be looking at a surprise hit in 2013. It will ship for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, with no word as to whether the PC or Wii U will see some vampire action, but expect to see more this E3.